We daresay that this hotel in China’s Yunnan province won’t be winning any prizes any time soon for grammatically precise branding. However, there’s no gainsaying its thoughtful intentions and the purpose of its designers, Co-Direction Interior Design who have transformed a former private residence into a charming 19-room property.
The location of the hotel – in the middle of Dali’s old city – informs much of its aesthetics. In particular, the layered courtyards and the extensive use of bamboo, grey bricks, peaked roofs and exposed raftered ceilings are a gentle ode to traditional residential architecture. Gentle, because Co-Direction hews off the classic references in the bedrooms with rigorously modern and customized furnishings.
‘We respected the character of the original public spaces,’ says design director Jiang Xiao-Lin. ‘We didn’t do much design here, except to enrich the spatial experience with furnishings. It was in the guestrooms that we were particularly able to express the local tradition in a contemporary way.’
The amenities are fairly limited – there is no spa and the bijou restaurant serves only breakfast – though the hotel is particularly enthusiastic about the reflective pond on the ground floor whose mirror-flat surface brings in the sky through the elongated sky-well. Meanwhile, an outdoor deck offers lovely views of distant Cangshan mountains.
INFORMATION
ADDRESS
53 Bo Ai Road
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jing Xu-Feng
-
Year in review: top 10 design stories of 2024Wallpaper* magazine's 10 most-read design stories of 2024 whisk us from fun Ikea pieces to the man who designed the Paris Olympics, and 50 years of the Rubik's Cube
-
Sharon Smith's Polaroids capture 1980s New York nightlifeIDEA Books has launched a new monograph of Smith’s photographs, titled Camera Girl and edited by former editor-in-chief of LIFE magazine, Bill Shapiro
-
A multifaceted Beverly Hills house puts the beauty of potentiality in the frameA Beverly Hills house in Trousdale, designed by Robin Donaldson, brings big ideas to the residential scale
-
Travel back to the Ming dynasty at Beijing’s new Mandarin Oriental hotelMandarin Oriental Qianmen merges traditional culture with contemporary needs in a 600-year-old historical building complex
-
Inside Palazzo Versace Macau, a lavish, mosaic-rich hotelPalazzo Versace Macau, the brand’s first hotel in Asia, continues to preserve Donatella Versace’s swanky hospitality vision
-
'Retreat and recharge' in Yanbai Villa on a secluded Beijing shorelineYanbai Villa wraps guests in quiet luxury, opening its doors on a secluded Beijing shoreline
-
The Karl Lagerfeld Macau hotel oozes opulence conceived by the late designerThe Karl Lagerfeld Macau hotel is a five-star extravaganza at the Grand Lisboa Palace Resort Macau, China, designed by the late fashion mogul and set to open in July 2023
-
Villa One at the One & Only Palmilla — Los Cabos, Mexico -
West Kowloon wonders to discover nowCultural and culinary adventures, extraordinary spaces and outstanding experiences in West Kowloon, Hong Kong
-
David Chipperfield Architects and Aim Architecture design ceramic-inspired hotel in China’s porcelain capitalDavid Chipperfield Architects and Aim Architecture unite for the Taoxichuan Hotel project in Jingdezhen
-
Ramshackle farmhouse in China's Hubei province gets a slick makeoverThe reimagined farmhouse is now a contemporary bolthole
